1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method of detecting omission in software-property management using a network, a system for the same, a server for the management, and a program for the management, which prevent a computer to be managed from being omitted in software-property management which manages, for each computer, basic information thereof and installed software, and fix-patch application status.
2. Description of the Related Art
Computers have recently been widely used in companies or organizations or the like for their businesses. Computers need to be used with software suitable for their intended purposes so that the companies or the like have installed and used various kinds of software on their computers.
Thus, the companies or the like need to take measures to properly manage the purchased software license to prevent the software from being illegally copied and used in their organization.
Most of software can, however, be easily installed from one medium to plural computers so that problems have arisen in that a huge amount of work is needed to know exactly whether pieces of software more than the licensed number are installed, and in that the survey results become much harder to maintain as the size of the organization increases.
In addition, many of the computers have recently been connected to networks to exchange information through them.
In such a situation, to prevent computer virus infection through E-mail or WEB access or the like, it is necessary to manage OS (Operating System) or application software installed on a computer connected to a network, not to have security concerns, such as by applying fix patches provided by software developers
However, as with the software license management problem, a problem has arisen in that a huge amount of work is needed to know whether the OS or application software is properly updated.
Methods have been proposed to the above-described problems, including a method allowing automatic-centralized management of software-property information. This method can be done by running, on each computer connected to a network, client software for software-property management which collects information such as computer basic information (such as a host name, a network address) or list information on installed software, and by sending the collected information to a server for software-property management (see, for example, JP-A-2001-222424, JP-A-2001-290937, and JP-A-2002-279165). Other methods have also been proposed such as managing software-fix-patch application status using a dedicated server, and automatically downloading and applying a fix patch to a computer with no patches used yet (see, for example, JP-A-2000-250743 and JP-A-2002-55839).
There have been problems, however, with such conventional methods as described above, that is, it is supposed in the conventional methods that client software for software-property management or client software for downloading and applying a fix patch is installed and run on each computer, or that OS or application software has the equivalent function as such client software, so that a computer on which client software is not running may be omitted in software-property management information, and illegal use of software may be overlooked or a computer having security concerns may be overlooked.